Wikiworld
A recent article on the Wired News website examined the latest development in the Wikiworld: Wikinews, a hybrid which hopes to combine the format of Wikipedia with the writing style of journalism.
Although my first response to the notion of Wikinews was a skeptical one at best, I've considered it a little more and, quite honestly, after witnessing the success of Wikipedia firsthand, I have to admit that it could probably work.
Working for the Setonian has given me a broad perspective on the work that goes into creating a good news story. Now that I think about it, the way that Wikinews is intended to work is somewhat similar to the way our school newspaper works. People post initial articles to the Wikinews site, then others come along and edit it as necessary to improve their quality. Students working for the paper here hand in their articles, and they then get chopped up and rearranged as necessary to improve their quality, as well, by copy-editors and revisionists.
Of course, the methods aren't exactly the same... We have a lot of rules for editing articles for the paper that the contributors to Wikinews will probably never have to follow. Nonetheless, I think it will be interesting to see just how successful the Wikinews endeavor becomes. Personally, I feel that it will never be quite as substantial as Wikipedia, but I also don't feel that it will be a total flop, either. The idea has merit.